About Paying off your rent arrears

If you’ve fallen behind with your rent payments, you should take action quickly to deal with the situation.

If you don’t find a way to pay back what you owe, this could lead to lots of problems. You could lose your home and have problems finding somewhere else to live.

You might not be able to rely on the local authority to rehouse you because they might consider you to have made yourself intentionally homeless. You might find it hard to get credit or borrow money in the future.

For all these reasons, it’s really important to try and pay back your rent arrears.

Also, if you're an assured or an assured shorthold tenant, it's important that you know how much rent you owe. This is because if you have over eight weeks' rent arrears, your landlord could take certain legal action so that the court will have no choice but to evict you.

You will need to contact your landlord as soon as possible to try and make arrangements to pay back what you owe. This page tells you how to go about doing this.

You may need help to talk to your landlord about your rent arrears. You can get help from your local Citizens Advice Bureau. To search for details of your nearest CAB, including those which can give advice by email, click on nearest CAB. Your CAB can also give you advice about other debts you might have as well as rent arrears.

Getting help to pay off rent arrears

If there are people living with you, make sure they know about your problems with the rent and are helping you out if they can. For example, if you have adult children living with you, ask them to contribute something to help you pay off the arrears. Explain you could all lose your home if you can’t pay back what you owe.

Agreeing a repayment plan

If you can’t pay off your arrears in full, you should ask for time to pay them back. You can suggest that you will pay back extra on top of your rent each month or each week over a certain period of time, until the arrears are paid off. A landlord may agree to this rather than end your tenancy because they want to get back the money you owe.

If your landlord is a social housing landlord like a local authority or housing association, they should have a policy for dealing with rent arrears. There are also certain rules they have to follow before taking you to court. These include agreeing a reasonable repayment plan that you can afford.

Private landlords may be tougher and expect payment more quickly. However, they still must not harass you or take other action like cutting off your gas or electric to try and force you to pay quickly. If your landlord threatens or bullies you in any way, get help from an expert housing adviser.

Your local Citizens Advice Bureau may be able to help or put you in touch with someone who can. To get details of your nearest CAB, including those who can give email advice, click on nearest CAB.

If you're an assured or an assured shorthold tenant and you owe over eight weeks' rent arrears, it's important to start paying off your arrears as soon as possible. This is because your landlord could take certain legal action so that the court will have no choice but to evict you.

You can try and come to an arrangement to pay off your rent arrears with your landlord at any time, even if you’ve already received papers saying that your landlord is taking you to court.

It’s important that you agree a repayment plan that you can afford to stick to. If you don’t stick to the plan, your landlord will probably take you to court and try to evict you.

It’s also important that you keep up with your current rent payments at all times. If you can’t afford the full rent, your arrears will just get bigger. You may be able to get Housing Benefit or other benefits help to pay your rent. Or you may be able to increase your household income in other ways or make cutbacks in your spending.

Working out how much you can afford to pay back

To work out how much you can afford to pay back your landlord, you will need to take a good look at your household budget.

You will need to make a list of all the money you’ve got coming in and all the money going out of your household. You can use the Budget sheet in our Budgeting section to help you do this.

The list should include any other debts you owe. Make sure that the amounts you put down are realistic. Once you’ve done this, you can show it to your landlord so they can see how much you can afford to pay back each month.

If you work out that you don’t have enough money to pay back your rent arrears, you should get help from an experienced debt adviser. You can get help from your local Citizens Advice Bureau. To search for details of your nearest CAB, including those which can give advice by email, click on nearest CAB.

What if your landlord won’t agree with your repayment plan

If your landlord won't agree the repayment plan you have offered, pay what you have offered anyway. This may make a difference if the landlord takes you to court.

Any agreement with your landlord should be written down and signed by both of you.

You can get help to deal with your landlord and to work out a repayment plan for your rent arrears. Your local Citizens Advice Bureau should be able to help. To get details of your nearest CAB, including those who can give email advice, click on nearest CAB.

What if you don’t keep to your repayment plan

If you’ve agreed a repayment plan with your landlord but haven’t kept to it, they will probably take legal action to evict you.

With some types of tenancy, such as periodic assured shorthold tenancies, you may not even get the chance to go to court and argue your case. A judge can grant your landlord permission to evict you under an accelerated possession procedure which means there doesn’t need to be a court hearing.

You could try going back to your landlord and asking them to give you a second chance. Explain the reasons why you didn’t keep to the agreement and, if you can, show them that this won’t happen again. For example, you may have just found out you can get Housing Benefit, you’ve got another job after being unemployed or someone has paid you back money they owe you.

However, you may find it very difficult to persuade your landlord to listen to you. If this is the case, you can get help to deal with them.

Your local Citizens Advice Bureau should be able to help. To get details of your nearest CAB, including those who can give email advice, click on nearest CAB.

If there is a court hearing, you may be able to persuade the court to let you stay on in the property, as long as you stick to the repayment plan in the future.

If you owe rent arrears and you think you might be an assured shorthold tenant, you should get advice about what to do from an expert housing adviser. Your local Citizens Advice Bureau should be able to help. To get details of your nearest CAB, including those who can give email advice, click on nearest CAB.